Expectations

We are all born with a set of expectations.  Expectations that start generations back.  From the very first day families have a pretty strong idea of what your life will look like.  What success will look like.  What happiness and sadness will look like.  If you are born into a middle class, educated family, the expectation is that you will likely end up as a middle class, educated adult.  If you are born early, or with health issues the expectation is likely that you will have more struggles.  If you are born into an extremely impoverished home there is a reasonable expectation that you will not grow up to be middle or upper class without significant changes in your circumstances.

 ALL expectations are judgment laden.  There is a pre-defined idea, based on family history and genetics of what success looks like.  Along with that there is the belief that unless we have “succeeded” we cannot be truly happy or fulfilled.  On the flip side, we frequently hear the new catch phrase “first world problems” which gives us all the message that we cannot be truly unhappy with our lives knowing that there are people in the world who have it so much worse.  As a result, many of us face adulthood not knowing if we are justified in feeling anything.  We can’t be happy because we have not truly succeeded yet – we don’t have enough education, or enough money, or a nice enough house or car, or we are not thin enough, or fit enough.  We also don’t feel justified in feeling sad because our problems are just “first world problems”.  After all, we have food to eat, a roof over our head, a car to drive, a decent job/education. 

Some people, like my son Collin, defy expectations right off the bat. We were told that he might not walk or talk, that he might not be able to do anything without assistance.  He did all of the above, and did it in the right order.  He was called a miracle – by us, and by friends and family, and even by doctors.  When he started having health problems later, I didn’t feel like I was allowed to feel sad about it or to grieve the fact that he wasn’t perfectly healthy.  I didn’t feel allowed because of my own judgment and expectations put on sadness.  I thought about how much worse things could have been, and I didn’t feel justified in expressing sadness for how things were.  After all, he was a miracle.

I work in the NICU at a Children’s hospital.  There are many families that will stick in my mind forever.  I will tell you about one.  There was one baby boy, who was born full term but had some horrible setbacks in his first few weeks.  He nearly died multiple times.  The family and extended family were people of great faith and turned to their priest for prayer and support.  The priest prayed fervently for the baby.  This baby boy survived and has done beautifully.  He has met all of his milestones, and amazingly is without any long term repercussions of the crises in the first few weeks.  The priest is now up for sainthood, and this child’s life is being seen as one of his miracles.  People from the Vatican actually came out to the children’s hospital to investigate this miracle.  This next part of this story is what sticks with me the most.  (This is not intended to question the priest or the belief that this story was significant).  The people from the Vatican interviewed one of the head neonatologists.  They asked him if he believed that this baby was indeed a miracle.  His response  “He is absolutely a miracle!  We have 65 miracles in the NICU right now.  Would you like to come see them?” 

The point to all of this is… we are all miracles!  Every single one of us.  Simply because we are human.  Success in humans is not education, or money, or things, or appearance.  Success is life.  We are valuable simply because we are here.  We can feel happy or sad or fearful, or any other emotion without comparison or judgment, simply because we have the capacity to feel.  There is no right or wrong.  There is no perfect success or perfect failure.  We all succeed and we all fail many, many times in our lives.  What makes us successful is that we continue to show up to life and do the best we can in relationships. That we do the best we can to take care of ourselves and those we love.... without judgment.